Wash It Clean
by KristALchelle
Summary: The war is over and the world is in ruins with many people dead. The survivors must learn to move on with their lives. Sometimes, that means finding comfort where it's least expected. Follows Deathly Hallows until the final battle then becomes AU. Not Epilogue Compliant EWE? M for language and adult themes


**Disclaimer- This is a fanfiction based on the writings of JK Rowling and the Harry Potter Franchise. All recognizable copyrighted and trademarked items mentioned herein belong to their respective owner. No infringement is intended or implied.**

**Warnings: Character Death, references to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Dissociative Identity Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder**

**I wrote this for the Reversathon on LJ, it was an anonymous fest that is now over so I can post this here. This was the gift that was requested by Darkrosefanfics. It was an honor to write this for you, hon, and I am so glad that you liked it! Thank you so much to the fantabuloso mods fluffyllama and trobadora for being so accommodating and for hosting such a wonderful event.**

**Thank you to Meddz for betaing this for me. I would be so lost without you!**

**OoOoO**

I think that if I ever decided to write a book, I would have to call it, _What Winning Really Means. _My story would describe the events that occurred after Voldemort was defeated at Hogwarts. The very first chapter would be titled, _Sometimes Even the Winners Lose_. It would be a detailed account of how it feels to stand victorious in a hall filled with the bodies of dead friends.

Dead friends who have the word hero forever connected to their name either in print or in spoken word.

Dead friends who are awarded the Order of Merlin First Class but have to let you accept it in their place as they are still very much, completely and wholly, dead.

Dead friends who might one day have a statue erected in their honor or scholarship named after them or a day of the year. At the very least, a bloody slab of marble on the ground if someone at the ministry would finally pull their head out of their arse and make a bloody decision in that regard.

Dead friends with names like:

Nymphadora Tonks

Remus Lupin

Fred Weasley

Fleur Delacour-Weasley

Lavender Brown

Parvati Patil

Seamus Finnegan

Colin Creavey

Minerva McGonagall

And so many more. But those are the names and faces that swim in front of my eyes every time I dare to close them.

Those are the ones whose sacrifices aren't recorded anywhere except across my soul.

Those are the ones who have taught me that it really doesn't matter if you win if you're dead when it's over. Can it even be called winning if everyone is dead in the end?

The dead don't care who won.

_Scourgify_

The next chapter would be called _Sometimes the Good Guys aren't Good._ Because sometimes, they just aren't. Oh, they really want to be, and at the heart of it, they are, I suppose. But it all gets polluted and convoluted and bloody messed up along the way until it becomes a shadow of a whisper of what it was supposed to be.

Ask Kingsley Shacklebolt about that sometime.

I'm sure he could tell you quite the tale of how it's not his fault that Wizarding Britain has fallen into anarchy because the existing ministry won't accept his leadership.

The sad truth is, that while most of the wizards of the Wizengamot would never have outwardly supported Voldemort, and in fact, many were known to publicly renounce him, none of them ever envisioned a world where blood didn't matter. The old ways would never be abandoned in favor of less conservative ideals.

No, they never intended to allow the winds of change to blow up their crusty old robes or through the hallways of the ministry in any way, shape, or form, be it by Voldemort, Kingsley Shacklebolt, or Harry the-boy-who-lived-so-he-could-save-their-arses Potter. Each posed a threat in their own right in that they threatened the status quo.

We just can't have _that_ now, can we?

No, the cold reality is that maybe there would have been a fighting chance for change if there wasn't a scorched black hole in Ottery St. Catchpole where the lopsided definition of home and family used to stand proud and strong.

Maybe if Arthur Weasley hadn't bought the idea that all evil died with Voldemort and that we were all good and truly safe again…

Maybe if he had let me make The Burrow Unplottable when I had asked…

Maybe if it hadn't been Fiendfyre that had torched the whole structure down to its foundation in less than a heartbeat…

Maybe if Molly had been ten minutes later in returning from her shopping…

Maybe if Bill, Charlie, Percy and George hadn't gone off half-cocked in their quest for revenge for their parent's murder …

Maybe if I had sent Crookshanks to Australia with my parents instead….

Maybe if I had been there….

_Scourgify _

_Sometimes Love Doesn't Conquer All _would explore the concept that sometimes, no matter your best efforts, love is just not enough. Regardless of the vision that might have been created in your head when you thought about what life would look like after the war.

No one tells you that you won't suddenly fast forward twenty years into the future and find yourself blissfully happy, and standing on Platform Nine and Three Quarters, fretfully waving goodbye to your firstborn as she boards the Hogwarts Express.

No one tells you that the man you envision being by your side in your picket-fence-life, perhaps even holding the hand of a miniature version of himself, has Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

No one tells you that his coping mechanism for this is constant shagging – with you and anyone else who may cross his path, male or female.

No one tells you that he will come home and climb on top of you while he still smells like the last tart he shagged.

No one tells you that you have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as well and that's why you allow it all to go on for as long as you do.

No one tells you because no one knows what the hell it is in this godforsaken backwards _don't-ask-don't-tell _Wizarding World.

No one tells you that you will slowly watch your two very best friends in the world crawl inside themselves until they are in places that you can't reach no matter how hard you try.

No one will tell you that Harry Potter becomes an obnoxious, belligerent drunk because no one would have thought that _that _could ever happen.

No one tells you that the morning after Ginny tells him she's pregnant with their first child, he's nowhere to be found. _It's like he's just vanished_. But how can it be called vanishing when Ron's gone too and he left a note saying, _I just can't do this anymore. Please try not to hate me. For what it's worth, I really do love you, Mione? _

_Scourgify _

Do you know what happens when a child is removed forcibly from their parents' lives? The parents shatter from the inside out. Parents aren't supposed to lose their children; it goes against the natural order of the universe.

Do you know what happens when a child removes all knowledge of herself from her parents' memories and then sends them to Australia under assumed identities? They become the people that they could have become if she had never been born. The father realizes that he really rather fancies the company of men over women and the mother realizes that she's a complete tart and an insufferable bitch.

Do you know what happens when the child arrives in Australia and attempts to restore her parents' memories? She unknowingly gives her mother dissociative identity disorder. Her mother now has memories, personality traits and identities of both Helen Granger and Monica Wilkes residing in her mind but she lacks the cognitive ability to assimilate them into one cohesive personality.

At least that's what eighteen out of the twenty-two Healers I took her to _say_ happened.

Do you know what happens when Heleka, or Monikelen, (as she more frequently refers to herself), becomes aware that she actually does have a daughter? She tells said daughter that she truly has missed her, she thinks, and that she really has no qualms about having a daughter, mostly, though she really, really, really does loathe the whole concept of children in general.

Really, really, really.

But, no, having a daughter is fine as long as she does something with that god-awful mop of a hair-do, comes for tea every now and again, gets a boob job or at least show a little cleavage for pity sakes, keeps up her studies, and, for the love of all that is holy, never, under any circumstances, tell anyone that Monikelen is her mother. Distant cousin thrice removed? Sure, no problem, that's fine, but anything closer than that? No and thank you.

And don't frown like that, you'll get _more_ wrinkles.

Do you know what happens when the child realizes that there is nothing that she can do to heal her mother and that it's for the best if she takes Monikelen home with her but needs to leave her father in Australia with his assumed identity and his Crocodile-Hunter-Wannabe lover?

The child shatters from the inside out.

_Sometimes the Road to Hell really is paved with Good Intentions. Really, really, really…_

_Scourgify _

He was born a Princely Ponce.

He once believed in blood supremacy. He should, he was spoon-fed it with his pabulum, wore it like a nappy and had it read to him for a bed-time story.

He was the tow-headed pride and joy of two well-meaning but highly misinformed people. They told him he would own the world, and he believed them. They would deny him nothing. Giving him everything he wanted, and nothing that he actually needed in order to survive in the world outside of the Manor's crumbling walls.

He fell into some bad company by and by, thanks all owing to dear old mum and dad.

He was commissioned to kill his Headmaster, if you can believe it. That was a pretty critical turning point for him. The Princely Ponce of Slytherin was many, many, _many_ things, but a murderer was _not_ one of them.

He didn't have to go through with it in the end, but the wheels of discontent had already begun turning for him, ever so slowly revealing to him the incontrovertible truth:

He was on the wrong side.

He expected to be punished for his allegiance and involvement when it all fell down and his side lost.

He couldn't think of a worse punishment than watching his sweet, beloved, and highly misguided mum fall at the hand of her own dear sister for not knowing the difference between alive and dead, though. She most assuredly knows it now.

He didn't speak for eleven months afterward. No one really noticed, they were too busy Crucioing him and his father in Azkaban. They were in there for a year before their trial and subsequent sentencing occurred.

He was actually very lucky, all things considered, to have had a trial at all seeing as the Ministry wasn't making a habit of doing such things. His father was sentenced to life as a Muggle. You see, in their wisdom, the Ministry decided that due to the severe lack of Dementors, their own severe lack of wanting to actually do anything that required effort on their part, and his severe lack of remorse, Lucius Malfoy should have his wand snapped, be Obliviated, and be excommunicated from Magical Society and made to live as a Muggle. They called it the Hermione Granger method.

He, on the other hand, _was_ remorseful and considered too young to really have known what in the hell he was doing anyway, and therefore _was_ permitted to keep his wand and his memories. The Ministry, in their benevolence, decided to keep his trust fund.

He was, however, also required to keep his _father_, the newly anointed Luke Malloy, _and_ an incurable case of muscle tremors that made his hands shake so badly that sometimes he couldn't even hold his wand.

He was made his father's guardian and was solely responsible for helping his father adjust to his new life, a life that he himself knew less than nothing about.

He knew full well that if anything went wrong and his father put even one perfectly manicured pinky toe out of line, they would both be back in Azkaban faster than you could say pumpkin juice with a twist of lime.

He was clueless and knew that he needed help if he and his father were to survive.

He had no one else that he could turn to, being the Pureblooded Princely Ponce who only had a close circle of other Pureblooded Princely Ponce friends. It was then that he realized that, _Sometimes Help Comes from the Most Unlikely Source_. It was then that he turned up on my front step.

_Scourgify_

It took over an hour for Malfoy to insinuate himself and his father past my front door and into my lounge.

It took less than half that time for my mother to insinuate herself under his father.

It took twenty shell shocked minutes of listening to them hump in my father's recliner for either of us to remember that we possessed the power to Silence the disturbing noises emanating from the room we had so hastily vacated.

It took three hours before either of us dared to enter the lounge and assess the damage. I'll never be able to sit in my father's chair again.

It took me half an hour to explain to Monikelen why it's inappropriate to shag random men in the lounge.

It took me even longer to explain that, _no, it wouldn't make it okay if she had taken him to her bedroom instead and no, my lack of large breasts is not the reason why I'm being such a prude about this. _

It took a week before he and I were able to calmly discuss the suddenly routinely obscene behavior of our respective parents without blushing or calling each other names. _I never knew this would happen, I swear it, Granger, I just thought that you could help me teach him to be a Muggle._

It took me a minute to remember that, S_ometimes the Truth really is Stranger than Fiction_. _I ask you, who could possibly have known that this would happen, Malfoy?! Stop apologizing for it; it just makes you more of a tosser than you already are. As you can obviously see, Malfoy, I'm in a bit of a mess with my mother right now, so it would be really great if you took your father, once he is upright and dressed again of course, and stayed somewhere else. You can even stay at our summer cottage and I'll even write you a Muggle Parents for Dummies manual, Malfoy, but you absolutely, one hundred percent Cannot. Stay. Here! _

It took him no time to agree, fully, completely and absolutely.

It took me a month to realize that the Malfoy / Malloy Family wasn't going anywhere.

_Scourgify_

"Push, Ginny, push!"

"Uuuuungh!"

"That's it, you've got it. Curl your spine, chin to chest, that's it, keep it up, you're doing great."

"Unnnnnngh!"

"He's crowning, Ginny, it's not going to take much more, he's almost here. Try to breathe normally until the next one hits."

"I… Merlin!... It's hard… Mione… I don't know… if I can… take much more."

"You can, Ginny, you've got this. Malfoy, give her another ice chip."

"Nothing would please me more, Healer Granger."

"Glad to hear it and you can drop the attitude Healer's Assistant, Malfoy."

"Why is he… even in here… anyway?"

"Because you wouldn't let me take you to a hospital and contrary to popular belief, I'm not a qualified Healer and I can't deliver your baby all by myself. The only other people who you have allowed to know about your pregnancy who could help are Monikelen and Luke. Shall I call one of them?"

"Godric no, Hermione! I would rather… deal with… the ferret than… either of those idio – OH MERLIN!"

"It's okay, just push, Ginny, there you go, just like that. Keep pushing, Ginny, here he comes!"

"That's the most disgusting thing I have ever seen."

"Shut up and hold her hand, Malfoy. If you can't encourage her, then keep your mouth shut and give her something to hold onto while she's pushing."

"St – st – st – st – upid – fff – fff – fff – fff – ferret."

"Yes, he is, don't worry about that, Gin, just keep pushing. Ok, there, good, that was excellent; it's not going to take much more. Malfoy, I want you to slowly count to ten out loud on the next one. Ginny, I'm going to apply counter pressure so try to keep pushing against my hand until he gets to ten, okay?"

"It's burning… Mione… it's burning… so bad!... I want… my mum…Mione…she's supposed… to be here…why isn't… she here… Mione?...I miss… her… so bad…I want… my daddy… He would… be able to… fix this…He could… fix everything… My son… won't have… a family… no uncles… Don't want…to do…this…without…them…"

"Ginny, you're doing so well. You are, and your mum and dad are with you, I know they are here, Ginny, and they want to meet your baby just as much as the rest of us do. I'm going to bash Harry about the head with his broomstick the next time I see him for doing this to you, Ginny. I know that it doesn't mean much, but I'm here and Malfoy and Monikelen and Luke are here, and as bloody messed up as this all is, we aren't going anywhere Ginny, we are all here for you and baby James."

"Not gonna… call him… that anymore… not giving him… the Potter… name either… don't… know… what to… call hi – OH GODRIC HELP ME!"

"_Sometimes You Just Have to Push Through It_! Ginny, push! Start counting, Malfoy!"

"One… You know she's right, Weasel – uh, Ginny, everything's going to work out just fine."

"Unnnngh!'

"Push, Ginny, Push! Here he comes, here he comes! Come on baby boy, come meet your Aunty Mione and your pratty Uncle Malfoy."

"Two…Hey! I'm trying to help here!"

"Well, your bedside manner needs work, keep counting!"

"Unnngh!"

"Three… Granger, is that the head?"

"Yes, you git! Keep pushing, Gin, he's almost clear."

"Four… that's seriously gross, is it supposed to be so slimy?"

"Yes, it's what's helping him get through the birth canal without getting caught up. Now, finish counting damn you!"

"Unnnngh! MIONE! HELP ME! Unnnngh!"

"Fivesixseveneightnineten!"

"PUUUUUUSSSSHHH!"

"Slytherin's soul! It's a person! You made a person, Weasel – uh, Ginny!"

"Yes… I did… Malfoy…yes… I… did."

"Congratulations Mama, you have a healthy baby boy."

"Thank you… Mione…I couldn't… have done… this without… you… either of you…"

"The pleasure was all Granger's. Oy! What are you doing to him, Granger?"

"I'm suctioning fluid out of his airway so that he can breathe, Malfoy. Make yourself useful and use one of those dry flannels to wipe him down and then wrap him up in a larger one. That little bonnet is for his head."

"So, then what, we just leave them like this? Don't we need to wash the slime off of him or feed him or something?"

"In a little while, he needs to bond with his mum first while we wait for the umbilical cord to stop pulsing so it can be cut. She'll be passing the placenta and afterbirth soon as well and we will need to collect it – "

"Well, it seems you have everything well in hand, as always, Granger, so I'm just going to leave you to it and go and send an owl."

"No, I still need your help and who in Merlin's name do you think that you need to owl at a time like this?"

"Blaise. He would want to know the blessed news. He's always rather fancied you, Weasel – uh, Ginny."

"Blaise Zabini?! He… has?"

"Oh yes, ever since your fourth year when your boobs came in huge and you grew your hair down to your arse. It's all he could talk about."

"Charming, Malfoy, very charming."

"Lay off, Granger, I'm sure that he likes her – uh – other personality traits too, it just never came up."

"I'm sure, but that can wait. Honestly Malfoy, she's just given birth and you're trying to set her up on a date? What's the matter with you? If you really want to help then I need you to – "

"It's okay… Mione… Go send…the owl… Malfoy…"

_Scourgify_

The man in the frame dances with a little girl who stands with her feet on top of his. He smiles at her as they twirl around, never letting go of her hands and never letting her slip off of his feet. She looks up at him and giggles with delight before looking back down at their feet again. It's obvious that he adores her whole-heartedly. It's also obvious that she thinks that he hung the moon.

In the frame beside them, a woman watches anxiously as her young son mounts his very first toy broom. Everything within sight has been transfigured into cushions. The joy on his face is unparalleled, as is the anxiety on hers. He zooms out of the frame; determination etches his delicate patrician features. She watches on, the moment is bathed in both pride and fear. He flies back in to the frame from another direction and she grabs him off of the broom and tumbles to the floor with him in her arms. He laughs and lets her hug him to her just briefly before he begins to wriggle out of her grasp and is determinedly mounting his broom once more.

We sit and watch those pictures the way some people watch television. Draco showed me a charm to animate that picture of my father and I and now I can't take my eyes off of it whenever I am in the lounge. It was always my favorite picture of us but now it is even more precious. To Monikelen and Luke, they are only framed posters of the seaside, but to us, they are the last priceless link to our absentee parents. He has also charmed them so that if Monikelen or Luke are ever so inclined to touch or move them, they will instantly forget what they are doing and feel suddenly compelled to use the loo. An ingenious bit of magic that.

We lay on the fold out bed in the lounge and are quiet as we watch because, as has become the tradition, we are not alone. Lying on his back between our stretched out bodies is a six-month-old fiery-haired semi-slumbering baby boy. He holds the index finger of my right hand in his right fist and Draco's left index finger is in his left one. He watches us watch the pictures and this is what lures him to sleep. No amount of nursing, rocking, pacing the halls or pacifier suckling has the same effect on him that lying with us seems to. He won't lie still like this for anyone else, just us. In fact, he screams the bloody house down if anyone but either of us tries to put him to sleep. I am truly enamored by him and I think that Draco feels the same way, though he never says it.

We've been sleeping this way on this lumpy fold out bed for four months now. I had been sharing my childhood bedroom with Ginny. However, Blaise's arrival invariably changed all of that. He had responded to Draco's owl within an hour of receiving it and was on our front door step with flowers and baby gifts before I had even finished disposing of the afterbirth and cleaning up the bedroom. It was so obvious to anyone on the outside looking in that he and Ginny were true soul mates. I found myself a little envious of their whirlwind romance. I shouldn't have been surprised to find myself wide awake in the middle of the night while the two of them languidly made love on the twin bed next to the one I was laying with the baby in. _Sometimes Love Trumps Friendship_. _Sisters before Misters_ my arse! I guess I should have known from the first moment that he walked into the house that I would eventually find myself standing in front of Draco's bed in the lounge; the baby in one arm and my pillow and blanket in the other. Surprisingly, Draco had nothing to say about the new arrangement except _I'll hex you if you snore, Granger._

_Scourgify _

My mind drifts lazily amongst thoughts and I am as drowsy as the babe beside me when Draco suddenly whispers, "They are going to call him Fury Weasley Zabini. The plan is to announce it officially at breakfast tomorrow but Blaise told me when he brought him to us for the night. I guess they just agreed on it while Ginny was nursing him."

"Well," I slur, as I am dragged back from the precipice of sleep, "That could still change, he's been here six months without a name, and I'm beginning to think he will never have one. I could see him as a Fury, I guess." I muse, looking down at the sleeping infant.

"He _could_ be a Fury," Draco quietly ponders. "Though classically a girl's name as it means, _enraged woman_, he definitely has the hair and personality to support the other common definition of the word which is, _wild force_."

I just make a non-committal sound and don't even bother asking him how he knows all of that.

I always thought that a mother would just know what to name her baby but apparently not. _Sometimes Even Mothers Don't Have a Clue_. For six months, Ginny's baby has been nameless, well officially anyway. We all had to call him something. You can't just refer to him as _the baby_ all the time, especially when addressing him directly. So, because she was reluctant to commit to one consistent handle, we all gave him our own. I call him Hugo because it is my father's name when he isn't going by Wendell and shagging blokes. Draco calls him Scorpius because it's dignified and noble, or so he staunchly maintains. Monikelen calls him David Beckham because of Beckham's_ ass that won't quit and package to die for_. Luke calls him Lump because he doesn't ever do anything productive and Luke thinks it's dreadfully clever. Monikelen laughed until she peed when she heard that the first time.

Blaise calls him Son and Ginny has called him Arthur, William, Charles, Percival, Frederick, George, or Ronald at different points in time but none of them seemed right to her. She flat out refuses to entertain the idea of naming him anything remotely related to Harry and keeps maintaining that she _will just know when the right name feels – well – right. _

"I think that I actually rather hate it." Draco finally whispers into the silence, his thumb absent-mindedly stroking the baby's fist for a minute before letting go to lift his wand and rotate the ba– Fury, so that his head is up by ours. He casts his usual shield charm over him so that neither one of us can inadvertently harm him in our sleep. I contemplate both his words and the baby for a moment or two more before murmuring,

"Me too, Draco, me too."

_Scourgify_

If I ever wrote a book about how our lives got to this point since the end of the war, I think that I would end it by simply saying, _Sometimes You Have to Get to the End Before You Can Understand the Beginning._

_Sometimes the big picture is just too large and overwhelming. _

_Sometimes big pictures need to be broken down into little tiny pieces and sometimes, when they are put back together, they form a completely different picture. _

_Sometimes it's in the healing of those little pieces that the whole can become so much more than it was before it was broken. _

_Sometimes I think that is what is happening to me. _

It's in the way that Draco and Fury are the first thing that I think about when I open my eyes each morning and how I don't feel like I'm okay unless they are lying beside me.

It's in the way that Draco takes Fury upstairs to Blaise and Ginny and then brings me down something to wear for the day because he knows I can't deal with Monikelen when she throws open her bedroom door and, with her hand in the air, yells _put your hand up if you got laid last night!_

It's in the way that he extends his arm for me to take as we walk to our jobs at the market every morning.

It's in the way that his tremors subside when I am touching him, even if it's just holding his arm.

It's in the way that he took the job application form that I was about to fill in, wrote _Haven Malloy_ under the name heading and checked the box that said _married_ under the marital status section.

It's in the way that his mother's wedding ring appeared on my left ring finger the next morning.

It's in the way that he smirks at me from his place at the deli counter while I struggle with icing cakes without magic in the bakery.

It's in the way that he glared at Matt from produce when he spent a little too much time asking me about the difference between sixty percent and one hundred percent whole wheat bread.

It's in the way that he walks through the market with me at the end of our shift and argues good-naturedly with me about what to make for dinner.

It's in the way that he never forgets to throw a packet of those teething biscuits that Fury loves to gum into the basket.

It's in the way that he never says anything when we get home and no one has started dinner but just rolls up his sleeves and starts washing vegetables.

It's in the way that he deflects Monikelen when she starts talking about the state of my hair, my clothes, my chest.

It's in the way that he never says anything about the state of her hair (backcombed and bee hived), her clothes (hot pink and lime green spandex), her chest (pushed up to her chin and overflowing her top).

It's in the way that he looks at her when she says _seriously, Drakie love, with a package like yours, you could do so much better_.

It's in the way that he tells her that they will just have to _agree to disagree on that one_.

It's in the way that he now seems to influence Luke's behavior rather than the other way around.

It's in the way that his father is now the one to tell Monikelen when she's gone too far rather than it always being Draco or me.

It's in the way that he sits with me in the lounge while we wait for Fury to be brought down from his bath and pre-bedtime feeding.

It's in the way that he is just as unhappy as I am with the state of the Wizarding World and with us hiding out in an Unplottable home in Muggle London but he doesn't have any more idea of how to fix it than I do.

It's in the way that we can talk about it for hours and, even though it changes nothing, we both seem to feel better afterward.

It's in the way that he knows that I have OCD even though he doesn't know what it stands for.

It's in the way that he knows that I get lost in the memories inside my head, lost in the guilt, lost in the shame, lost in the horrors – just lost.

It's in the way that he knows that I can't stop the compulsion to wandlessly Scourgify my hands.

It's in the way that he knows that I don't even realize that I am doing it.

It's in the way that he heals my hands each and every time they get too raw.

It's in the way that he knew before I did that my parents had been tampered with and that what happened to Monikelen wasn't my fault.

It's in the way that he said that_ war is about knowing the most effective way to break your opponent, and someone was definitely studying you. _

It's in the way that he always reassures me that _one day, we will find out who did this and we will get your parents set back to rights, Hermione, I promise. _

It's in the way that he always announces _there's our boy _when Blaise brings Fury down for the night.

It's in the way that he makes it clear to Blaise and Ginny that we are just as invested in Fury as they are.

It's in the way that he appointed us as Fury's godparents because _Salazar knows the boy will be eighteen before Ginny gets around to doing it. _

It's in the way that he will always make sure that Fury is ours between the hours of eight in the evening and eight in the morning no matter where we end up living.

It's in the way that he tells Fury that one day he's going to have a baby brother named _Scorpius Hugo._

It's in the way that he just laughs when I correct him and say _Hugo Scorpius_.

It's in the way he smirks and says _Hugo and Scorpius_.

It's in the way that he always murmurs, _sleep peacefully, dear one, may the stars light your way to Dreamland and may the fairies always guide you back when it's time to wake, _right before Fury nods off completely.

It's in the way that he's never told me outright but I just know that is something that his mother always said to him.

It's in the way that he levitates Fury to the small pallet on his side of the bed after he knows that the baby is well and truly sleeping.

It's in the way that he shields the baby so that we can see and hear him but he can't see or hear us.

It's in the way that he reaches for me and takes me to heaven without us ever leaving the lumpy fold out bed in the middle of my parents' lounge.

It's in the way that he smiles that secret smile that's just for me when he wakes up in the morning, and raises his hand into the air.

It's in the way that our little corner of the universe works even though the rest of the world is monumentally fucked up.

It's in the way that we both know that one day soon we will have to deal with it all, but right here, right now, what we have is enough.

It's in the way that we know that despite everything, in the end, we really did win.

_Scourgify_

**This is my first offering to the Harry Potter community, I welcome all opinions but please be gentle, I bruise easily! Thank you so much for reading! Captainraychill wrote September First as my gift and it is AAHMAZING! Do check it out and send her some love!**_  
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